Structurally Unsafe
by burnttongueontea
Summary: A search for a murder weapon takes our detectives into not-very-serious danger. A(nother) short thing about John and Sherlock... let's call it Johnlock-ish. Plus some Lestrade, being 100% done as usual.


"Look. It says Do Not Enter."

Sherlock and John turned as one and gave Lestrade exactly the same withering look.

"Congratulations on learning to read..." said Sherlock wearily. "Now are you going to stand there all day?"

"But," Lestrade replied pointedly, "It says Do Not Enter. Building structurally unsound."

"And that's exactly why it's such a good place to hide a murder weapon. Am I right?"

"Yes, John, exactly. Despite my continual astonishment that such an incredibly simple form of manipulation should work on anything more than a child, it's an ideal hiding place, because the majority of people insist on obeying signs even when the evidence of their own senses demonstrates they should not do so."

"Yes, look, it's obviously been standing at least two years since that sign was put up. So it's not likely to fall on our heads in the next ten seconds, is it?" John finished his thought. "We're still going in."

"We should at least wear hard hats," Lestrade insisted. "If somebody gets hurt while you're swanning about in there, health and safety will be right up my -"

"Oh, shut up," Sherlock interrupted, and started to kick the rotten old door down. Lestrade folded his arms and tried his best to look like he could probably stop this happening if he _really _wanted to.

"If you'd rather wait until some safety equipment arrives, I'm sure we can go ahead without you," John suggested, in a not-exactly-patronising tone.

"Look, you win, okay?" snapped Lestrade. "But you're going to get yourselves killed one of these days, you know."

The damp, old wood gave a tortured squeal and gave way under the fifth or sixth impact from Sherlock's foot, falling backwards like a felled tree and sending up a thick cloud of unsettled dust. After trying and failing to shake the pain out of his ankle in a way that wasn't noticeable to the other two, he stormed through the opening and out of sight. John followed with a little more caution, taking in the powerful scent of the dust - the smell of construction sites, although not much was being built here, a dry and subtly sweet scent that was somehow cold in his nose. Or maybe that cold was just the air, which had that unwelcoming feeling of air that has not been occupied for a very long time. He didn't need to duck under the doorframe as Sherlock had. For a moment after going inside, it was impossible to see anything as the light levels fell sharply and his eyes took too long to react: the first thing he managed to focus on was the outline of his friend, caught in the beam of sun from a hole in the roof, turning slowly around as he examined the whole large space.

He moved further inside, allowing Lestrade to follow him in. Gradually the interior of the building became clearer - an old factory space, littered with random rubbish like rolls of torn carpet and three-legged upturned tables. What stood out most were the skeletal aspects of the structure, old uncovered beams spanning the length and width of the high ceiling. Those drew his attention. He knew it was this rusty-looking iron keeping them from being crushed to death, by maintaining the tension of the whole building. The importance of their role was visible: in the empty spaces between the beams, the roof had sagged and melted inward. He'd seen damaged buildings, and damaged bodies, and they always reminded him of each other - the drooping edges of the roofing material put him oddly in mind of torn skin, flaps getting sucked into the edges of a serious wound.

"Look," said Sherlock, pointing suddenly at a chair to the left of the room. "Somebody's been in here."

John looked at the chair. He could not see anything about it that strongly suggested somebody had been in the building, but knew better than to say so.

"It's upright. But you can see by the accumulation of dust on the left surface that it was lying on its side until recently."

Sherlock started walking briskly towards a set of faded red double doors on the opposite side of the room. John moved quickly, in order to catch him up.

"They can't have come in the same way we did," he said, but stopped both talking and walking as there was a cracking sound from somewhere above their heads. John glanced up just in time to see a fragment of roofing tile lose its precarious position on the edge of a large hole in the roof and start sailing gracefully through the air towards them. For a second, thanks to the unusual perspective of the flying tile from below, it looked like it was travelling so slowly that he forgot that it might be a danger. He remembered the risk pretty quickly, however, when it came whistling through the air and hit Sherlock on the head.

With a sensation of horror, John saw all the tension go out of Sherlock's body. Fortunately, the horror did not block his immediate reaction, which was to step forward and throw his arms around the falling man. John's knees and John's spine took on the task that Sherlock's skeleton had abandoned and absorbed his fall, although he did stumble under the sudden dead weight, and had to carefully drop to the floor.

"Sherlock?"

He was unconscious, and he was lying across John's folded knees in a way that was pretty painful, but he immediately rejected the idea of putting him on the ground, since it was centimetres deep in dust. John swallowed. Calm. Head injuries. This was fine. He knew about this.

"Sherlock!" said Lestrade. "Is he alright?"

"No," John replied in a measured tone. "Well. Let me see."

Gently, he lifted Sherlock's head and quickly located the injury. Using two fingers, he carefully brushed the hair away and found a large, vulnerable bump, and a small cut, oozing blood, which he wiped away in order to determine that the cut was small, and shallow. It was tiny, really; it was lucky. He was about to announce that everything was fine, but for some reason he didn't. Although not quite sure why, he took a few strands of the hair he was holding back and squeezed them lightly between his fingertips, wanting to feel the texture of the individual hairs on his skin. Then, remembering a mannerism of his sister's when bored that always made him frustrated with his own short unfiddlable hair, he rolled the fingers across each other while pulling back so the tiny strand of hair twisted tightly and then fell out of his grip. It took a second before he realised what he had done.

"He'll be fine in a minute," he said loudly, suddenly embarrassed for some reason, and not quite sure whether Lestrade might have seen him do this. Instinctively, he tried to brush the curls back into place, but this reminded him too much of stroking and made everything worse, so he stopped quite quickly.

Lestrade suddenly loomed over his shoulder.

"How bad is it?"

"No, it's not bad. Not at all. He might be a bit disorientated, that's the worst of it."

Under Lestrade's gaze, he was conscious of the fact that he was effectively holding Sherlock in his arms. Slightly reluctantly, he shifted the other man onto the floor, and shuffled back half a metre, although he continued to stare intently down for signs of recovery.

"Disorientated?" Lestrade repeated doubtfully.

"Hopefully not too much."

"He'd better not be. If he doesn't find what we're looking for, God knows the whole case will be -"

"Is that an admission of your own incompetence?" muttered Sherlock, cracking an eye open suddenly. He peered suspiciously up at John.

"Oh! You're awake. Are you feeling alright?"

"I wasn't unconscious for too long, I hope?"

"Only a couple of minutes. Are you sure you're -"

But before he could finish the question, Sherlock had somehow returned to his feet, with a rapid elastic motion, and was storming towards the double doors.

"Oi," John called after him. "You can't just walk off. You're concussed."

"Nonsense," Sherlock protested, cheerfully, but firmly.

"Sherlock...!"

But he had already reached the doors, and was disappearing through them. John glanced back at Lestrade, who shrugged.

"Sherlock," he said, in an explanatory tone.

"We'd better follow him," said John. "Just in case he gets in any more trouble."

He climbed awkwardly to his feet, perfectly aware that the chance of more trouble was close to 100% certainty, and started following Sherlock Holmes through the doors, to whatever might lie on the other side.


End file.
